Here's something that happened to me as a teenager. When this happened, I did not know what to make of it and put it down to an episode of severe depression. But now I feel it may have been an OBE of some sort. What do you all think?

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When I was about 16 years old, I was in the midst of the worst depressive episode of my life, and I believe I was unmedicated at that point. I had suffered from mental illness (depression and anxiety ) since my childhood, and my parents did not know what to do with me. The emotional abuse from them received as a result, caused me to crumble internally.

On this evening I was in the car with my mom as she went into a pizza place to pick up dinner. I sat in the car while she went inside. The parking lot overlooked a drainage pond and behind it was a forested area. The sun had gone down and it became dark. As I looked through the windshield at this scene, I experienced a profound thing which will be hard for me to explain now. The dark scene transformed into a void. It was the most chilling, hellish void, and I was within it. God, who I had believed in fervently, was nowhere. I was separated from him and was left alone, profoundly alone. This void was real and it is impossible to put into words.

My mother came back to the car and I was crying and screaming. I can't remember exactly what happened then but I know it ended with me hitting her and basically losing my shit. I have never forgotten that hellish experience but I'm happy to say that things got much better after that, although I still struggle with depression to this day.

my personal feeling is that you are a very brave soul who must have somehow chosen to look at the most remote and desolate outposts of separation from our unconditionally loving source straight in the eye. It may feel terribly unfair for a teenager to go through all this, but thanks to your early memories, it truly feels as if there is much more than meets the eye here.

As with many NDErs who go through depression as a result of having experienced the bliss of unconditional love and oneness, in my opinion, there must be a reason, and a very positive a serious one, if you were allowed to plunge into that void.

If you were an elastic band that, having stretched as far as it could, is now allowed to go back to some kind of stability and use all the information you have to make the world a better place, thanks to the ripple effect that loving and thoughtful actions have, then I would say that this is the time to acknowledge you are precious and that you are here for a very important reason.

Thanks, Giulia I don't think I deserve to be called "brave"-- maybe in some other reality, haha! But I do hope there is some good reason for these experiences, because they sure are not pleasant.

I like the idea that we choose our life experiences. It makes me hopeful. But, it is so hard to understand why people would choose these things, and worse. There is much worse out there.

Question is, what do we do with the experience? Do we write about it, or what? It would be nice if God would just tell us how to use these things for the good of others. As far as I'm concerned, it happened, and I'm glad it's over.